Coitus Reservatus

SEX, of course, always sells. But the question here is, do we buy Uncertain Liaisons, a sex package by Khushwant Singh and Shobha De? It's easy to raise provocative questions but hard to have provocative answers.

This package, teeming with bad English and marginal ideas, is hardly a book likely to expose you to anything new.

De's essay on Indian men in Colaba-English is easy reading and basically anecdotal. Packed with whining women who drone on and on about crude, loutish Indian men, one wonders, of course, how they come to these conclusions? Have they slept with foreign men to compare or is this simply an extension of the craze for plwn'n? Aren't there loutish men all over the world? And. do I detect strains of an anti-male in the attractive De? She gives Indian men a pretty low rating on almost every imaginable 'score'. It would have been more balanced to see if she had asked Indian men to rate their women. And since all this is not based on a seriously conducted survey but on anecdotes, my experience says that Indian women are professional winners. whereas the men. just as disgruntled, simply find their pleasures elsewhere. The question is: are Indian women interesting sexually? Unlikely.considering the complacent barrels of lard one sees rolling around.

Prakash Kothari writes in a manner so dogged with medicalese. you beg for mercy! Orgasm is described as "a cerebrally encoded neuro-muscular response at the peak of sexual arousal, by psycho-biological stimuli, the pleasurable sensations of which are experienced in association with dispensable pelvic physiological concomitants". Enough to convince you to never want this medical phenomenon.

Mulk Raj Anand writes a village sex scene in a style heavy enough to make a reader limp with fatigue. "But, storm-tossed, scampering, wriggling hard, twitching with the concentration of nerves outstretched for months in desire for her, in a fierce felicity, he was intent on the dissolution of her energies, the melting snows of her virginity...." Has Anand put his finger in a light bulb socket? Phew!

M.F.Husain joins the carnival with: "Her two dimensional body, stark naked, lies flat on a tactile surface, like a piece of canvas virgin white crying for wounds to be stabbed on her untouched desire..." Perhaps De is right. These men seem to be preening peacocks, strutting their performance more than communicating. Frank Simoes' piece on "A Perfect Pair of Breasts" is an irreverent send-up of the advertising world. And Puru P. Das, when he gets past the over-writing. gives an incisive description of the new TIM. i.e., the Typical Indian Male.

Indira Jaisingh seems plugged into a reality one would welcome. She writes about women who are fighters. And puts forth an important concept: "The oppressor and the oppressed have arrived at an equation which allows the woman to accept her inferior status in return for upper class living." Khushwant Singh's essay recycles boring information from Indian classics. Wouldn't it have been more fun to draw from his own experiences?

And De's conclusion is indicative of the whole book-tired, old hat: "This woman, reflecting the views of some others, said to me tiredly. 'Sex...who needs it?'I hated to tell her this but I had to: 'Everybody, darling, everybody'."So, what's new. darling?

EXCERPT

WHY all discussions about women should begin and end with sex is another instance of the male obsession that there is little else to women besides being sex objects. The women's lib movement in the West has pretty well knocked out that illusion cherished by generations of males. The same process is taking place in India where males have been pampered and women discriminated against from the dawn of history.

EXCERPT

SO does the Great Indian Lover only exist in temple carvings and between the pages of the biggest lie ever told-the Kamasutra? It would appear so going by the 'voices' in this essay. The libido is there. What's missing is the light (and right) touch. Once he learns to press the appropriate buttons there'll be a lot more happy faces in India. Women are willing to keep their frustrations on hold a little longer.

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